GREEK EXECUTIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26777, 21 May 1948, Page 5

GREEK EXECUTIONS

“NO POLITICAL BIAS” REPLY TO SOVIET PROTEST ATHENS, May 19. The Greek Government, replying to the Soviet protest against executions in Greece, said that no one had been put to death for “political reasons." Those executed were sentenced for murdering innocent hostages and undefended civilians in armed uprisings. "They were helped and encouraged from outside.” the reply stated. The diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Times, writing from London, states that the British Government is aware of the sending of a Note by the Soviet Government to the Greek Government protesting at the executions being carried out by that Government and demanding that they should cease forthwith. The most timely comment at the moment seems to-be contained in a factual report by a senior British official in Greece of first-hand information he has been able to collect, in the course of talks with many people m many localities, about crimes commuted in Euboea in 1943—crimes of which , the recent executions are the outcome. Representative villagers gave the following details of Communist murders in three villages: First, a villager responsible for collecting food for local ELAS bands (Greek Resistance Movement—the Popular Army of Liberation), who protested at the size of their demands, was taken before the leader and beaten to death. He left a widow and eight children. Secondly, the Germans' forced a young man, picked by chance, to show them the way to a mine in which arms were hidden. Later the band attacked his brother and two other young men not connected with the incident and beat them to death before the same leader; and thirdly, another village of solid small peasant cultivators, all non-Com-munist, was attacked by ELAS. Eighteen men who had defended themselves and were overpowered were killed in cold blood with knives and with great brutality. These are typical of the crimes committed by Communists. It is reiterated that it is not the intention of the British Government to intervene in the matter of the execution of those responsible for such crimes.